Photometric Toolbox® Overview

Photometric Toolbox® is an evaluation program for manufacturers’ luminaire photometry that allows you to create, edit, repair, report and compare luminaire data. This is the cult-users tool you hear about when industry insiders talk about luminaire performance. If you are serious about lighting, you must have this program!

View

Get a 3D snapshot of the photometric distribution with a click, it’s incredibly informative! See candela, keywords and 2D polar plots as well. Learn more about the View Tool.

Report

Photometric Toolbox will create a complete photometric report from any IES file in Indoor, Road or Flood formats. Learn more about the capabilities of the Report Tools.

Convert

Powerful lab-grade functions such as: Type B and C conversions, change angle sets and modify test position. Freely open and save across IES, EULUMDAT and British Standard CIBSE TM-14 photometric formats. Learn more about the Photometric Toolbox’s Convert Tool.

Compare

Photometric Toolbox allows you to evaluate and compare up to three different photometric files on a side by side basis with user-defined criteria. Learn more about the Compare Tool.

Template

Create iso-illuminance templates to scale for any height and arrangement. Choose from standard arrangements or specify your own. Export to DXF function included to take the templates to CAD! Learn more about the Template Tool.

Create

Photometric Toolbox provides a Wizard approach to entering photometric data from a paper report in either Type C or Type B goniometer formats. When complete, the information is saved as an IES format photometric file for use with any application program (like AGi32).

Edit

Editing individual IES files is easy with the Photometric Toolbox. It’s easy to understand worksheet allows you to modify your photometric files, if needed, without having to understand the IESNA data format. Making your photometric data Keyword compliant is simple with standardized keywords you can drag and drop into place.

Repair

Photometric Toolbox will automatically repair IES files with many common problems prevalent in early releases of the IES format (LM-63-1986).

Learn to use Photometric Toolbox®

If you are under 40 there is a good chance you may never have seen a complete photometric report (on paper) from a laboratory. Manufacturers offer their luminaire photometry electronically in IES standard format and have “some” details either online or in a “cut-sheet”. However, if you want to see ALL the information that can be computed from an IES file, you need Photometric Toolbox.

Photometric Toolbox is very easy to use from a software perspective. However, as the topic of luminaire photometry is complex, some of the things you can do with the software might test your knowledge. The software is a great way to learn more about luminaire photometry and your best learning resource when experimenting is the programs’ Help system.

The basic workflow for Photometric Toolbox is as follows:

Open a photometric file (IES, LDT, CIB)

1. Using the open command
2. Select from the Instabase
3. Drag-n-drop to the left column
4. Drag-n-drop on to the desktop icon
5. Double-click on the file in Windows Explorer (if the default file association has not been changed)
Select the photometric file or files to act upon in the left column of the software by checking the box. You may not want to act upon all open files at one time. You can select them and de-select them as needed when performing actions.
Select an action to perform using the Tool buttons across the top of the software form. All checked files will be acted upon. For example, three files checked will yield three Indoor reports.
Basic reports are Indoor, Road& Flood tools

1. 3D view of the “web” with the View tool
2. Scaled iso-fc(lux) templates with Template tool
3. Compare two or three files with the Compare tool
4. Edit files using the Edit tool
5. Convert test position or photometric type (B, C) using the Convert tool
6. Save as another format (IES, LDT, CIB) using Save As…
7. Create new IES files using the New tool

Watch the Overview video if you have not already done so.

AGi32®Stand-alone software for any lighting application

ElumTools®Complete lighting analysis inside Autodesk Revit

Photometric Toolbox®Report, edit, convert luminaire photometric files

Web ToolsLuxiflux Web-based calculations for manufacturers

Instabase®Cloud-based search engine for photometric data & files

Photometric Power ToolsBatch factor and edit IES files - for manufacturers